UK News

UK Reaches Agreements to Buy 90 Million Doses of Potential Covid-19 Vaccines

By Tony Winterburn • Published: 14 Aug 2020 • 10:46

The U.K. signs deal to buy 90 million doses of coronavirus vaccine. image: Twitter

The UK government has signed deals that will give British citizens early access to 90 million doses of two more potential Covid-19 vaccines.

THE vaccines are being developed by US biotech company Novavax and pharmaceutical business Janssen, who has headquarters in Belgium and is owned by Johnson & Johnson.

Under the in-principle agreements, the UK has secured 60 million doses of the Novavax vaccine, with it supporting a Phase 3 clinical trial with the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR).

Britain had previously signed a deal with AstraZeneca to provide 100 million doses of the coronavirus vaccine being tested by Oxford University, which is expected to announce further results later Monday.

The government statement said “Millions of people could be vaccinated against coronavirus,” citing the three different vaccines it has now invested in.

Kate Bingham, chair of the Government’s Vaccines Taskforce, warned that it was still not known if any of the vaccines would be effective, she said: “The issue is we don’t know which if any of these vaccines may work because there have been no vaccines against any human coronavirus.

“So what we’re doing is we’ve chosen six of the most promising vaccines across four different vaccine types and we’re hoping that one of those will work.”

“It would be a nice position if they all work, but that’s not likely. The reality is that most will fail and we want to be sure that if anyone is shown to be effective and safe that we have rights to it.” Ms Bingham went on to say she was “reasonably confident” of a vaccine being found that will reduce the severity of coronavirus symptoms and reduce deaths.